Use of punctuation is important, period

Sunday

May 18, 2014 at 6:00 AM

This is what my wife said to me the other day: "I'm going in the other room now, so I won't be able to hear you."

OK, but here's the problem: Since it was spoken communication, not written, I had no way of knowing whether she put that comma in the sentence, and that makes all the difference in what she was trying to tell me.

Without it, she could be saying she was leaving the room because she didn't want to hear me. With it, she would only be cautioning me that in the next room, she might be unable to hear me. Big difference. The kind that could lead to a she-said-he-said showdown.

Punctuation doesn't get enough attention, especially in these days of email-messaging with all its shortcuts and lack of nuance. I'm never quite sure whether LOL means lots of love, lots of laughter or lots of luck. I'm happy to get any of the three, but the last could easily be a bit of sarcasm in the right context.

Consider this sentence: A woman, without her man, is nothing. That could start a marital free-for-all. But how about this, which uses the same words but varies the punctuation: A woman: Without her, man is nothing. Take that. Or as the French might say in their quaint language, touche, Madame.

In the same vein, English teachers are fond of quoting two versions of a letter in which the writer makes a wholly different case, depending only on the punctuation marks:

(1) "Dear Jack: I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy — will you let me be yours? Jill."

(2) Dear Jack: I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn. For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours., Jill."

Both of these examples can be found in the funniest book on punctuation I've ever read. It was written by a British woman named Lynne Truss and is titled "Eats, Shoots & Leaves." a name inspired by this: "A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. 'Why?' asks the waiter, as the panda makes for the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual, and tosses it over his shoulder. 'I'm a panda,' he says at the door. 'Look it up.' The waiter turns to the entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation: 'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.' "

And, speaking of punctuation, the world lost a genius when Victor Borge, an accomplished classical-pianist-turned-comedian, died in 2000. Borge, a Jewish native of Denmark, escaped to America after the Nazi takeover in World War II. Poking good-natured fun at his profession, he invented something he called Phonetic Punctuation, reading stories on TV punctuated by silly sounds designed to dramatize the narrative. Anyone who missed his act should catch it on YouTube. It's priceless.